Wednesday, April 25, 2012

Moths as Pollinators


Moths evolved to deal with flowers. Their long, tube-like tongues are just right for sipping nectar from long-necked blossoms. Nectar is practically the only food of adult moths, thus a strong partnership with flowers developed. We are familiar with butterflies pollinating flowers, but easily forget about moths. Actually, butterflies are a specialized type of moths, or, more properly they are all Lepidoptera.

Then, it is important to learn more about the role of moths in pollination. Here are a few articles that deal with this subject.


Yellow-collared scape moth on turtlehead
Black-and-yellow lichen moth, a little known pollinator
Crambid snout moths
Gardening for Honorary Butterflies: Mint Moths
Hummingbird Moths. Where do they go in Winter?
Inch worms: more little known pollinators
Little known moth pollinators: seed casebearers and flower moths
Metalmark moths. More little known pollinators
Noctuids, another family of little known pollinators
Plume Moths. More Little Known Pollinators
Pollinators, the Night Shift
Yellow-collared scape moth
The Yucca Moth and the Yucca
Zygaenidae, more little known pollinators
Geometrid caterpillar, or inchworm (Eupithecia) on sunflower

Other Articles on Moths and other Lepidoptera:

Bugs in the Garden. Hornworm: Friend or Foe? Friend and Foe
Caterpillars are for the Birds
Food for wildlife
Gardening for Honorary Butterflies (Mint Moths)
Pollinators in Winter: Fritillaries

Hummingbird moth on Monarda
Hummingbird Moth
Hawk Moths
Ailanthus Web-worm Moth
Yellow-collared Scape Moth
Carnivorous Lepidoptera. In Bugguide.net
Projectile Frassing. In Flickr
Pollinators in second shift: moths. Dave's Garden
Pollination by Nocturnal Lepidoptera and Effects of Light Pollution: a Review

Videos
List of articles 

© Beatriz Moisset. 2012

3 comments:

  1. Dr. Moisset-Thank you for this list. I wanted to learn more about moths. Thanks to the book on bees, I was able to pay more attention in my yard to see what bees were out and what I thought were bees were not all bees, but some were flies after posting a photo to BugGuide, I was left with this Syrphidae A Helophilus...This opens up a whole new avenue for me to explore in my yard.. Michelle

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  2. Ima fan of the clearwing moths, in fact... that entire family pleases me.
    I will even accommodate the manduca sexta.

    Your posted links seem to all go to your own articles. Do you ever link off-site to well written articles by your peers?

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    Replies
    1. Clearwing moths are beautiful and useful as pollinators. This is just an index of articles on moths published in this blog to make navigation a little easier since archives are not user friendly.

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